On Sundays we reflect

Sundays are always the days when I find myself reflecting me and my life.

There is just something about that day, either if you were drunk last night so now you are regretting your life choices from yesterday, if it's just a cozy Sunday with bad weather and you stay home and watch classic movies on TV,  or if it's a sunny Sunday so you go on a walk in nature with your favorite people.

Yesterday's Sunday was no different. I had a little bit of all in it. 

I woke up, still feeling hungover from Friday night, I watched a classic American teen rom-com movie in my pajamas, I went to McDonald's for some comfort food, I met my best friend for a long long talk and in the end I visited my grandma to brighten up her day. 

My reflections were the following:

First and foremost I can't handle drinking like I used to when I was in high school and although I did have a reason to go overboard that night (I'll get into that in a few weeks), I need to never do this again. 

Watching movies like the teen classics, makes me wish I was a typical next door girl, and makes my heart warm in a way I can't really explain. There are just some movies and shows which make me feel like I am there and like my life is what I always wanted it to be - an american romcom teen movie/tv show (or Friends, Sex and the City, all 80s John Huges movies). Then I realized - chill girl, that is not real and you need to accept that your life will never ever be like that. Romcoms are created to make you feel a certain way, make you love the actors and wish you were them and wish your stories were like theirs. But in reality life doesn't work like that, and that's ok.

After finally getting myself dressed and functioning, I met my friend.

Now he is actually one of my dearest friends and he usually travels around the world for work, so when he is here, we try to hang out as much as we can. He came back from a trip and our coffee turned into four hours of talking. We really never talk about superficial stuff or have small talk, we always talk about deep stuff, history, relationships, our problems, the past, the future and so on. He tells me stuff from a man's perspective and I tell him stuff from a women's perspective. He always questions me which I deeply appreciate, because my stubborn ass sometimes thinks I was 100% right in situations when that just is not the case. So it's good to have someone question you and give you reality checks. He has also had a very different life than I have, meaning that he had to grow up fast, so I find his advice valuable. And he is also strangely smart, so I really don't google that much I just ask him stuff like hey, what happened in xy country at the year xy? And he just explains it to me right away like an encyclopedia.

I feel very grateful I have such a friend, and although we can sometimes act like douches to each other, we realize that is just our stupid occasional behaviors and get over it. Like one time he didn't speak to me for a week because I was dancing to Kanye West. 

But I digress. 

The point here is, it is good to have a friend who isn't just gonna say "good job" for everything you've done and say you were right when you tell them about something that happened to you. That for me isn't a supportive friend, that is a fake friend. A real, closest friend tells you the truth, their opinion and acts as a sort of a mirror for you, helps you be the better you. So I try to surround myself with those people in life always, because although sometimes it's hard to hear the truth and hear that you weren't in fact right, it's necessary for you to grow as a person, to accept yourself for all that you are and to see things from a different perspective.

Finally, going to my grandma's, we watched Back to the future movie together. So since in movies I see from that era, I love the music, the clothes and the atmosphere - I asked her "so how was it in the 50s, really?". And her answer was: "I liked them, I was young, the clothes were much more polite and it was a great time". So I thought well great that's nice, until she continued: "But you know before that, there was the war until 1945. That was a little bit different, my friends house was bombed, but my mother would hide me in a hole in the ground when the bombings happened, so I was OK. We were lucky it didn't hit us. Also the railway was getting bombed, but still, me and my mother would travel by it just to get some milk. I also walked an hour to school every day, because the army was placed in our old school, so we had to have classes sitting in front of some church. But you know when you are young, nothing seems difficult to you."

So I was like ummmmm yeahh when I was that age I cried when I accidentally broke my Barbie's head, so I really can't relate to that grandma. But damn did that make me reflect, what were we ever complaining about when we were kids? Or even complaining about now? 

I don't think we ever realize how lucky we are. Then I remembered my other grandma, who recently had breast cancer surgery. She survived the same war, except her dad was taken away and she had to live in a sort of a monastery. So she got married at 20 y/o, had two kids and a job, all while surviving two more cancers.

I find grandmas and grandpas really interesting, they have had such different lives than us. When you get older, you realize they are just people too, with their own stories and their own reasons. And although sometimes I find it hard to talk to them because they mostly complain about stuff and it's hard to hear that, I always try to ask them about what they did at my age, because in that way they remember their younger days and that makes them smile.

So to sum up, yesterday's Sunday reflections made me realize that to find inspiration in people you don't need to look at celebrities or look far, you can find stories of strength, survival, love and loss, and real inspiration in your own family and closest friends. And these are the people I find inspire me to be better every day, so I fell asleep feeling lucky I live in a more peaceful time, and being deeply grateful for having these kind of people around me.

"I happen to go for the simplest, most ordinary things. The extraordinary doesn't interest me. I'm not interested in psychotics. I'm interested in the person you don't expect to have a story. I like Everyman." 

- John Hughes (1950–2009)